The Adventure Continues, part 3

Aside from a swollen left hand, Day 2 dawned with an air of hopefulness.

My sister and I were about 10 miles into our planned 273-mile adventure on Vermont’s Long Trail—the footpath in the wilderness. The previous two Pastor’s Page installments cover the months of preparation up to the actual start of the Long Trail (part one) and the first day’s challenges (part two).

At first light, a couple of the other hikers began packing up their stuff to get an early start on the trail. Over the next hour, one by one, the rest of us came to life and began the morning ritual: deflate the sleeping pad, roll up bedding and stuff in the pack, fix breakfast, clean up, pack up, and head out.

In the midst of all this, the nurse who gave me the OK on my hand (see part two) seemed puzzled as she sorted through stuff, as if looking for something.

“I can’t figure out where my earplugs went!” she finally exclaimed. “I had them right by my head when I went to sleep last night!” [By way of explanation, most hikers will carry a pair or two of earplugs for sleeping in the shelters to block out the relentless sawing of logs!]

By this time, only four of us were still at the shelter, and we all looked around a bit—to no avail. The earplugs seemingly vanished.

A few minutes later, Cindy returned from the privy, and as she approached the front of the shelter, she asked, “Are your earplugs orange?”

Indeed they were, the nurse replied. Cindy spied them on the ground under the shelter and, with no little effort, retrieved them. The package had some clearly defined teeth marks and small chew holes. Apparently, while we all blissfully slept, a mouse or chipmunk mistook the orange earplugs for tasty morsels of cheese and spirited them away so he could nibble in secret. Undoubtedly disappointed, he abandoned the faux cheddar when he realized it offered no nutritional value whatsoever.

In great delight for the return of her earplugs, the nurse declared, “Your trail name should be ‘I-Spy’!” And just like that, Cindy was christened with a trail name.

I remained merely “Bryan.”

As I said, the day offered hopeful prospects. The sun shone brightly, temperatures were pleasant, rain chances were relatively minimal, and we had a reasonable distance of 10.5 miles to cover in the next seven hours.

The trail was as messy as the day before, though.

Which probably accounts for the error.

About a mile and a half later, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a white blaze in a while. Typically, the 3”x6” rectangles are painted on trees every so often to mark the main trail (blue blazes indicate a side trail). Given that so much attention is paid to the feet, it’s easy to miss a blaze or two. It’s usually not a big deal, because the trail itself is so easy to follow.

And I was following the trail…just stayed on the path in front of me…not veering off course—I thought.

I looked carefully at the trail itself. Footprints in the mud—a good sign. Others were in front of us. “Surely we’re on the right path,” I thought. “How could we not be? There was no other way to go!” I reassured myself.

After 2 ½ miles (almost all downhill, by the way), I saw a pond ahead. The trail ran right into the water! Looking from a distance, I concluded 1) it was from all the rain, 2) there was certainly a way around it, and, 3) if not, it couldn’t be too deep to cross. After all, the trail picked up on the other side of the pond—about 25-30 yards across.

Coming to the bank of the pond, all my conclusions were proved wrong. This wasn’t from all the rain, and it was too deep to cross. And although I saw footprints leading into the woods to my right and a narrow path seemed to head in a direction to go around it, I knew it was definitely not the Long Trail. Furthermore, I still hadn’t seen a white blaze, and if we were supposed to ford this pond and come up on the other side, there surely would’ve been a blaze on the other side.

Somehow, somewhere we got off trail. Where??? How???

“Lord,” I silently prayed, “Help!” Fortunately, I could ask Him and not count on the hills! Remember Psalm 121:1-2?

I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

I have an app, FarOut, that includes a detailed map of the Long Trail. Of course, you only use it when necessary to save the phone’s battery charge. This was one of those times.

Sure enough, the GPS tracker placed us about a mile and a half off the trail. Which meant we had to hike a mile and a half uphill to figure out where we missed the trail. And it wasn’t a mere pond—it was a lake that had become so swollen it flooded the “dirt road” that we mistook for the trail!

As we climbed uphill, one of the hikers from the previous night’s shelter met us coming downhill; however, he was one of those early departures. Apparently, this was his second time down this wrong path! His were the footprints I’d seen earlier, thinking I was following the right path.

He explained that he’d already been down to the “pond,” followed that obscure path in the woods looking for a way around it, figured he was off trail, went back up to find the path, didn’t find it, was on his way back down…. I pointed out the FarOut map showed the trail splitting off back the way he came, so off he charged.

A few minutes later, I heard, “I found it! Here it is!”

The path we were on was a wide, fairly decent trail—a dirt road, supposedly. But where the much narrower Long Trail diverged into the woods, someone had put some branches partially blocking the wider trail—a universal trail signal telling you, “Don’t go that way!”

I recalled seeing that insufficient barricade when we passed it but incorrectly assumed it was merely blow-down from the recent storms. Perhaps if it had crossed the entire wider trail, we would’ve stopped long enough to see which way we were supposed to go!

Incidentally, reminds me of Jesus talking about two ways to go into eternity:

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

– Matthew 7:13-14

We were glad to be back on the “narrow way,” even though it was the more difficult route!

However, this unexpected diversion robbed us of time and energy. Looking at the map, the distance to the planned stopping point (8 miles), the required elevation gain over the challenging terrain, and the time it would take to get there, we decided to stop at the next shelter a mere two miles ahead.

At the time, we couldn’t know how fortunate we were to do so.

As we had come to expect, those two miles were muddy, rocky, and challenging. So it was a welcome sight when the Congdon Shelter came into view.

Situated right next to an abundant stream, we had an ample water supply. A wide clearing afforded us a place to lay out wet shoes, socks, and pants to dry in the sun. Arriving early allowed me time to jot some notes in my journal and prepare a decent dinner—chicken fried rice, as I recall.

The shelter eventually filled up and so did the many nearby tent sites. All but one of the other hikers were AT thru-hikers with 1600 miles behind them. At first, I felt a little intimidated by my woeful lack of experience and the few miles we’d covered thus far.

Then I met three AT-ers who were my age. In chatting with one of them, I discovered all three retired from their careers at the beginning of the year and decided to “celebrate” by hiking the 2,100+ miles of the Appalachian Trail together. They remarked how tough the Long Trail was compared to previous sections of the AT, and—most encouraging—mentioned that for the first week, they hiked only about 8 miles per day. Well, in our two days thus far, we’d covered about 17.

And my mind returned to Psalm 121.

The Lord helped us…was our Protector…brought us in again.

Ah, but we were behind schedule—almost 6 miles behind, to be precise. Little did I know, we were going to fall much farther behind very soon!

To be continued….